


The Hyacinth Garden

by Anefi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alpha Laura Hale, Alternate Universe, Curse Breaking, Cursed Derek Hale, Deputy Laura Hale, Grief/Mourning, Halloween, M/M, Minor Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Minor Laura Hale/Lydia Martin, Temporary Character Death, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-07 10:39:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12231186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anefi/pseuds/Anefi
Summary: There’s a park not far from Stiles’s house with crushed stone paths rambling through hushed trees, soft grass, dense beds of sleepy flowers. Sometimes Derek is there too.It’s not a typical ghost story.





	1. Speak

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Sterek Writing Room September prompt: Fairy Tales and Laura Hale Awareness Week 2017. I hope it’s okay to list it for both! This started out as two stories but really, really wanted to be one.
> 
> Warnings in the end notes!

The glass bottle clinked against the stone bench as it dangled from Stiles’s fingers. Startled by the sharp sound and reverberation, he would have jumped, probably, if he hadn’t been well past tipsy, limbs heavy and loose. He giggled, instead. “She’s great, though,” he insisted, “So great. Everyone likes her. Even me! So, whatever. It’s not like I don’t get it.” He exhaled heavily and leaned over to carefully set the bottle on the ground. Sitting back up suddenly seemed like a lot of effort, so he rested his cheek on his knee and stayed there. “I’d probably ditch me to hang out with Allison too,” he mumbled into the fabric of his jeans. A breeze shivered through the tree above him, and he shivered too. He’d taken off his jacket… somewhere, and his flannel and shirts weren’t warm enough by themselves, even bolstered by alcohol. He picked at the soft, shadowed grass by his feet. “I just don’t get how—they broke up _yesterday_. Scott’s epic heartbreak is _why we were getting drunk_. Why did they break up if they were just going to get back together? Why get back together if they’re going to break up the next time Allison’s dad threateningly makes a custard? Like, pick one. One or the other. You know? It’s supposed to be a _commitment_. _Commit_.”

“Sometimes people just don’t want to admit they’re ready to move on,” a bemused voice said from beside him.

Stiles cracked open one bleary eye to find a pair of scuffed black boots pointed at his Converse. They were unfamiliar. “It’s like Schrodinger’s relationship,” he told the mysterious shoes. They were partly covered by nice black jeans, which led up to a shirt that fit like none of Stiles’s shirts ever fit, under a black leather jacket too cool to be this close to him, and dark hair, and stubble, and Stiles’s mouth was kind of running on automatic, even more than usual, so: “It’s fucked up what that guy did to that cat,” he said solemnly, to the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.

The guy stared at him. Stiles’s neck started to hurt from craning his head to keep looking at him while still resting it on his knee. “Yeah,” the guy finally agreed, and Stiles gave him a dopey smile, because it was nice to be right all the time and have people acknowledge it, even though he’d completely lost track of what they were talking about. Then, “Hey, you dropped this,” the guy was saying, and holding out—

“My jacket!” Stiles shot mostly upright and reached out with grabby hands. “Dude, you’re a lifesaver. It’s _chilly_. I’m chilled.” He hummed a little as he untangled it and stuffed his arms through the sleeves on the third—fourth try.

“It is,” the guy agreed, _again_ , being downright _agreeable_. That was so nice! He was so nice.

“You’re so nice,” Stiles said, and his cheeks kind of hurt from smiling so wide.

The guy rolled his eyes, but he was kind of, almost, smiling too. “I’m Derek,” he said.

“Derek,” Stiles said. “Derrrrrrrrrek. Der _ek_ ,” He pondered it for a moment, then nodded in acceptance. “I’m Stiles. And this—” he gestured expansively to the open seat beside him “—Is my bench.”

Derek quirked an eyebrow at him. Stiles waved impatiently. “That was an invitation,” he clarified. “You may _join me_ on the bench. My bench.” In a fit of bravery he never would have attempted sober, Stiles reached up to where Derek’s hands were stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket and tugged his sleeve down toward him. Derek jerked a little in surprise when Stiles’s icy fingers brushed the back of his hand, so he let go quickly. Before he could apologize, though, Derek was settling beside him, cool moonlight brushing his features with otherworldly beauty. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion and rose incredulously and Stiles was sure there was a language there, a hidden meaning, if only he could decipher it, and it took Stiles probably way too long to realize A), he was staring, and B), Derek was laughing at him, quietly but unmistakable.

Luckily, before it got awkward – more awkward – he remembered what he was doing before Derek showed up. “Since I have so graciously permitted you to sit here, now you have an obligation—to me—to… to help me drink this.” He fished the bottle out from under the bench and thrust it at Derek triumphantly.

“No getting out of a bargain like that,” Derek said dryly. “To your health.” He tipped his head back to drink, and in the moonlight he could have been carved from marble, like the statues around them. Stiles may have been staring again. He snapped out of it when Derek asked, “You’re the sheriff’s kid, right?”

“You can’t call the cops on me! That would be so uncool, Derek. I didn’t even steal the bottle! I bribed a guy whose older brother has a fake ID, fair and square.”

“While that certainly sounds perfectly legal and above-board,” Derek said, “I don’t care about that. At all. Just, is there anyone looking for you? You’ve been out here a while.”

“Oh. Nah. I was supposed to be hanging out with Scott, and—Dad works a lot, you know how it is. Gotta keep people safe.”

“Right,” Derek said, _more than a little_ dubious. Stiles opened his mouth to argue, but Derek cut him off. “Scott’s the friend who ditched you?”

“He’s the best,” Stiles said loyally.

“I’m sure.” Stiles decided Derek didn’t get points for being agreeable if the agreement was _dubious_.

“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be talking to you.” Stiles sat back with a smug grin.

“That’s true,” Derek noted, “You wouldn’t be drunk off your ass on your own in the woods, free to be accosted by a stranger.” _Sarcastic_ agreement got negative points, Stiles thought vindictively.

In lieu of words adequate to express his vehement disagreement, he blew a raspberry. The unimpressed, incredulous look he got in return was probably the same one he’d get for growing a second head.

“We’re close to the preserve, here; there are dangerous—things. People. You don’t know me,” Derek argued, “I could have… dishonorable intentions.”

“I’m not that lucky,” Stiles groused, and he rolled his eyes when Derek just eyebrowed at him some more. “It’s been years since those animal attacks, and trying to convince me that _you’re_ some kind of bloodthirsty threat to my person is actually working pretty well toward doing the opposite. It’s kind of adorable,” Stiles said. “Besides, you’re not a stranger.”

 “You think that because you know my name now, I’m not a stranger?” If Derek was a guy any less ruggedly handsome, the expression on his face might be described as pouty. That’s probably why he kept the stubble, Stiles figured. To avoid accusations of pouting.

“ _Yes_ , exactly,” Stiles said, pleased that Derek had managed to keep up. “And you didn’t _accost_ me, you brought over my jacket. _And_ I see you playing chess with Father Morse sometimes, by the west gate. He used to just sit there moving pieces around by himself, when I was a kid, which was weird, so it’s cool you saved him from that. So, no, too late, you’re not a stranger. I’m on to you, Derek. You’re a valued member of the community, and you’re _nice_.”

Derek rolled his eyes, but Stiles was pretty sure the little smile he ducked his head to hide meant he wasn’t too annoyed.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let word get around,” Stiles reassured him. “You’ve clearly got an image to maintain. It’s a good look, I want to support it.” 

“… Thanks,” Derek settled on for an answer.  

They talked for a while, as Stiles gradually sobered up. Mostly about sharks, somehow, with a dramatic re-telling of the movie Sharknado. As he walked home through the woods that crisscrossed the back lots of the town, his hands were still freezing; it really was cold out. But he’d had a good night.

He didn’t notice the faint black shadow that followed him silently up to a weathered stone marker beside the trail, where it stopped and, eventually, turned back.

 

۩۩۩

The next time Stiles saw Derek, he was playing chess again. Stiles summoned an awkward smile and waved. From halfway across the park, Stiles couldn’t see his expression, but Derek’s head cocked in a way that seemed—amused, maybe. Stiles wasn’t going to try to read too far into it, but it was acknowledging, at least, and that was better than expected. Derek even waved back, tentatively, or just how cool people wave, a contained flick of his hand instead of a semaphore for attention. Father Morse looked back and forth between them when he noticed Derek’s gaze slipped off the game, and he waved too. Stiles took a wandering gravel trail from the open green space by the gate past dense beds of nodding flowers, dropped his backpack on the ground and set up with his back to his tree. He’d brought his laptop, so he popped in headphones to listen to music while he finished an essay. Having no internet available helped keep him on task, which was always a struggle, though he still lost some time throwing crumbs at a bird from what had been a snack bag of crackers in his backpack, and to watching Derek play chess. Father Morse still had the odd tendency to pick up and place all the pieces himself; it looked like Derek was just telling him his moves. Probably just used to playing that way, Stiles figured.

His eyes were killing him when he looked up again, and he abruptly realized that was because hours had passed, and it was almost dark. It would be ridiculous to be annoyed that Derek hadn’t come over to say hi, or whatever, and Stiles definitely hadn’t been at the park doing homework that wasn’t due for days instead of at home playing video games because he was pathetically hoping that they would talk again, so it was fine. Totally fine. _Completely_ fine, he told himself, viciously stuffing books back into his bag before stomping down the trail through the woods back to his house.

He’d gotten a wave, though, he reasoned later, chewing determinedly through a short stack of grilled cheese sandwiches. It took eight years of knowing him before Lydia would return a wave. Maybe they could still be friends.

 

۩۩۩

“…Anyway, field archery is totally different, with targets actually in the woods, but she placed first and third for longbow and crossbow, which was amazing!” Scott grinned at Allison, even though he was talking to Stiles, and kissed her hand proudly before turning back to his friend. “My mom needed the car so I had to leave before the last round, but you totally should’ve been there, dude, it was so cool.”

Allison blushed prettily. “You can’t even see the shots from off the field, it can’t be that interesting to watch,” she demurred.

“We’re there to support you, obviously,” Lydia said. Smiling sharply, she added, “Besides, the view in the staging area is just fine.”

“Lydia, _no_ ,” Allison complained, laughing.

“I’m just saying, Allison, it’s very considerate of you to pursue excellence in a sport where your fellow competitors have such strong arms, broad shoulders, capable hands…”

“I hate you,” Danny told her. “I’ll text him, okay?”

“Good,” Jackson asserted, settling his arm more securely around Lydia and unsubtly using the opportunity to flex. She patted his arm consolingly. “You need to stop pining over Jesse. He’s not even good at the backstroke.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Because that’s the first thing I look for in a guy, of course: his lap times.”

Lydia arched an eyebrow. “Maybe his _lap_ ," she countered.

“Stop calling me shallow,” Danny grumbled. “Derek seems like a really sweet—”

Stiles dropped a chicken tender and almost knocked over his milk. “Derek? Derek who? What do you know about Derek,” he demanded. The popular half of the table stared at him like they had honestly forgotten he was there and did not appreciate the reminder. Which was probably accurate. To be fair, a few other tables were staring too. Sometimes Stiles had trouble with volume control.

“Derek… Wu,” Danny said slowly. “From Beacon Valley. Do you… know him?” Danny was a nice guy; it seemed like he would honestly regret being forced to unceremoniously cut off all further contact with Derek Wu if Stiles answered in the affirmative.

“Oh. No. Different Derek,” Stiles said, and went back to his chicken. Derek was many things, but probably not a Wu.

Scott re-solidified his position as number one best friend by asking, “Derek’s the guy you met in the park, right? Did you get his number?”

“No,” Stiles said morosely. “I don’t think he has a phone.”

Unfortunately, Jackson was still listening, and he snorted derisively. “If he told you that, it means he doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Fuck off, Jackson, he talks to me a lot,” Stiles defended. “I never see him check texts or anything, either.”

Allison broke in before the sniping could escalate to a fight. “How does he know what time it is without a phone? Nobody wears a watch anymore. I would be totally lost.”

“I don’t know,” Stiles said. “He looks at the sky a lot.”

“It sounds like you made up someone just as much of a loser as you,” Jackson muttered.

 

۩۩۩

Most days during the week, Stiles had lacrosse after school, or detentions, or both, so his time at the park was pretty much limited to the weekends. Looking for Derek at the grocery store or the gas station was stupid, probably, since he’d never seen him around town before, didn’t even know where he lived. Looking up that kind of information in the police directory would be highly illegal. And he couldn’t, because he didn’t know Derek’s last name.

A cool person probably wouldn’t have launched an aggressive campaign of practically encamping at the last known location of someone they wanted to be friends with, but nobody had ever accused Stiles of being capable of playing it cool. Still, he was a bit surprised how quickly his nebulous hopes were simultaneously raised and dashed, when he showed up Saturday morning and Derek was already there, standing by the pond in the middle of the park, deep in conversation with a pretty girl with brown hair, a snub nose, and moles. She smiled shyly up at him, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear, so Stiles looked away, and didn’t wave. He trooped over to the spreading tree that shaded his bench, slung his backpack and himself down into the cradle of roots.

A few minutes later, gravel cracked under worn boots as Derek walked up the path toward him. The girl was gone.  “Hey, dude,” Stiles said, surprised.

“Stiles,” Derek acknowledged, gracefully folding to the ground beside him. Derek was still gorgeous in the sunlight, of course, but something about him fit better in the shadow of the tree, edges softened, stillness more natural.

Stiles shook his head a little to snap himself out of staring again. “Was that Sara Krasikeva?”

“Yeah,” Derek said.

“I haven’t seen her here before.”

“She’s usually,” Derek gestured over toward the side of the water, where there was more open space, younger trees.

“Oh—with her sister.”

“Paige. Yeah. She was in the car.” 

Stiles grimaced. “Sucks.” They sat quietly for a minute – Derek, because that seemed to be his default state, as he tipped his head back with closed eyes to rest against the bark; Stiles, because he was nervously clicking his pen, trying to navigate his thoughts to the least embarrassing path of conversation. Reluctantly, Stiles chose noble self-sacrifice. “She seemed to like you, dude. I won’t be offended if you want to hang out with her instead.” It was only kind of a lie. He would be bummed, sure… but he would understand. Bro-code, or whatever.

Derek rolled his eyes. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of weirdos who like to hang around here all day.”

Stiles bit back a grin, inexplicably relieved. “Yeah, well,” he said. “You’re here too.”

“Best company in town,” Derek said, flashing a little smile of his own.

“Aw,” Stiles cooed, a hand splayed over his heart; teasing, but he felt a blotchy flush start up his cheeks anyway.

“Oh, no,” Derek said, “Not you.” He tipped his head toward the nearest statue, an angel with wings and arms outstretched, weathered tracks down its face that made it look like it was crying.

Stiles threw his head back and laughed, but he didn't miss the pleased edge of Derek’s smile as he looked away.

 

۩۩۩

Lacrosse games, for Stiles, were generally nothing more than an opportunity to enjoy his requisite bi-weekly bench-sitting. The highlights were A) Rooting for Scott to get a ball and not drop it, B) Rooting for Jackson to get tackled as brutally as possible and C) Congratulating Scott when he subbed out and collapsed next to Stiles, grinning and sweaty, and Stiles handed off his inhaler. There were other habitual benchwarmers, but Stiles talked to Coach Finstock more than Greenburg, the underclassmen were painfully earnest, and Isaac Lahey always kept to himself.

Or, he used to.

Halfway through the first quarter, Stiles turned to Isaac and snapped, “What, Lahey? Is there something in my teeth?” It wasn’t an idle concern – his bad habit of chewing on his gloves was sometimes more successful than was ideal – but the staring was getting on his nerves.

Isaac mistook this as a friendly overture, and slid down the bench to sit next to him, for the first time in—ever. His voice was pitched low enough that Stiles could barely hear him over the swelling roar of the crowd behind them. “I heard you in the cafeteria,” Isaac said, and looked at him expectantly.

“You and everybody else,” Stiles grouched, glaring back at the field.

“Which Derek were you talking about?”

Stiles whipped around to face him. “ _You_ know Derek?” Isaac raised his eyebrows expectantly; he’d asked first. “I don’t know his name—tall, dark hair, leather jacket, eyes like—” his eyes were hard to describe, actually, without using terms like _hypnotizing_ or _glittering emerald_ or _vernal pools_ , which Stiles refused to “—he looks a little bit older than us, hangs out in Oak Park?”

Isaac nodded. “Yes. You’re friends with him?”

Stiles was _trying_ to be. “Yeah, you know, he seems—” lonely, sometimes; weird, always “—like a good guy.”

Isaac stared him right in the eyes; it was a little disconcerting. More than a little. “He _is_ ,” Isaac said fiercely. “I met him after my brother died, and he—he’s good. He helped me out, when I needed—before I got placed with my foster family. Lots of people get the wrong idea about him, but don’t listen to them. He’s _good_.”

“Dude, what are you talking about? I know that wearing a leather jacket doesn’t mean he’s in a gang, or whatever. Father Morse is way scarier; that guy was a sniper in the army.”

Isaac eyed him incredulously for a second, but then his expression cleared, and he shook his head, laughed. “In a _gang_. That’s hilarious. I never knew you were funny, Stilinski.”

“It’s just one of my many fine qualities which are underestimated constantly,” Stiles said, a little thrown; he didn’t think it had been his best work.

Coach Finstock blew his whistle and called for a substitution. “Parker! Get out of there! Lahey! Get in there! See if you can trample that fast guy with your freakishly long legs!”

“Sure, coach. One defensive foul, coming right up,” Isaac said, tossing off a mocking salute as he jogged in.

Stiles went back to chewing on his glove and watching the game; specifically, he watched as Isaac tripped the guy, as promised, and he went flying. “Excessive, but effective,” he said contemplatively.

“That’s my life motto!” Finstock shouted in his ear, which explained a lot.

 

۩۩۩

Feeling hungry was kind of an unpredictable event thanks to his Adderall, so Stiles had a habit of carrying around snacks: stuffing them in his backpack when it occurred to him, and digging something out when he actually felt like eating. Crackers were good, if he got to them before they were reduced to ziplock bags of edible dust, but Reese’s cups were his favorite, so it was probably inevitable that he would have ended up, at some point, holding out a torn wrapper towards Derek, waiting for him to take a disc of sugary chocolate and peanut butter, only partially crushed. It had seemed rude not to offer. Watching Derek’s face, Stiles couldn’t quite tell if it was a mistake.

Derek stared at it, and stared at him, but finally took it carefully, held it like something precious, analyzed it with every ounce of attention in his green-gold eyes. Stiles was struck by a sneaking suspicion. “Dude, have you never had a peanut butter cup before?”

Derek huffed at him, but didn’t look away from it. “We didn’t have them when I was growing up,” he said absently. He took one delicate bite, and Stiles had to look away, cheeks heating, as Derek chewed thoughtfully. Who thought someone’s _teeth_ were cute? What _was_ that?

“Were your parents hippies or something? All organic or whatever, no processed sugar?” he asked.

“We grew or foraged most of our own food. Hunted for meat.” Derek took another bite, licked stray chocolate off his lip.

“Hardcore,” Stiles said, maybe half a register higher than he’d meant to be. He cleared his throat. “I love diner food way too much to live like that. And pizza. Hunting down a takeout menu is pretty much the limit of my ability.”

Derek shrugged. “It’s all we knew,” he said. Every ounce was painstakingly savored, until he was licking his fingertips free of chocolate. Stiles resorted to staring wide-eyed at the calmly rustling leaves over their heads, and the fluffy clouds, and somebody running along the edge of the open grass of the park, paced by a blissfully happy dog with short grey fur. “That was good,” Derek said. “Thanks.”

It was a little embarrassing how much he wanted to give Derek a hundred more.

 

۩۩۩

“I used to see this big black dog around here—do you know what I’m talking about? Huge, kind of fluffy.”

Derek’s cheeks looked a little pink; maybe from the sun. “Oh. You—um. Yeah.”

“Yeah? One time when I was ten, I tried to stay here overnight, with a sleeping bag and everything, and we hung out until one of the deputies showed up looking for me.” The night had been dark and terrifying, loud with the strange shrieks of crickets and unfamiliar birds, but after one black shadow resolved into a shaggy, hulking canine that licked his face and curled up against him, he’d spent hours crying into warm fur. Stiles didn’t tell anybody that part of the story. “That dog was my bro,” he said. “I miss her.”

“Him,” Derek corrected automatically. 

Stiles gaped at him. “That was _your_ dog.”

Derek looked shifty for a second. “Yes,” he said deliberately. Grudgingly, he admitted, “My sister called him Dee-Dee.”

It may have looked like a monster, but it had always been gentle with Stiles. “Dee-Dee,” he said, testing it out, and he had to smile. “I can see it.”

Derek grumbled under his breath.

“He’s okay, though? Dee-Dee? I used to see him all the time, and I just—He was always wandering around by himself, and the road is, you know.” He waved in its direction. “Right there.”

Derek blinked at him in confusion, then softened. “It’s fine, Stiles. He’s smarter than most dogs. Independent. Usually avoids people.” He paused a beat, then leaned in, like he was sharing a secret. “Part wolf.”

Stiles snorted at him, but grinned; he’d always suspected that was the case, and it was pretty cool to have it confirmed. One more shared secret for his slowly growing hoard. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I used to have this idea—” Stiles laughed a little, self-conscious, but he wanted to trade something back. “I had this book of fairy tales, as a kid. You know, _Thumbelina_ , _The Princess and the Pea_ , stuff like that.”

“Hans Christian Anderson.”

Stiles shot him a look. “Sure, you get that one, but you’ve never heard of Shark Week? Weird, dude.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I don’t have a TV. It’s not that weird.” 

“Maybe not weird, alright. _Barbaric_ , there we go, that’s better.”

“Old-fashioned,” Derek countered. and his teeth were very white and sharp.

“ _Hipster_ ,” Stiles accused. “Name one thing you like made in the last… twenty years, come on.”

After a narrow-eyed pause, Derek answered, “Comic books.”

Stiles nearly swooned. “Really? _Really_. Marvel or DC?”

“Captain America.” He dipped his head a little to the side, considering, and added, “Batman’s okay, I guess.”

“Okay? _Okay_? You—” Stiles wrestled down his outrage when he realized Derek was snickering at him. “Oh, I get it, I see how it is. Asshole.”

“Your _face_ ,” Derek managed, gasping with laughter. Stiles couldn’t even be mad about it, trying not to stare at Derek’s open grin.

“Yeah, alright, fine, you got me, I may have mentioned it once or twice. Here’s the important question, though: Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, or Sam Wilson? Honestly, I’m a little surprised; I thought you’d be a Wolverine guy.”

Derek hummed in thought. His eyes slid sideways to Stiles, with a wry little slant to his mouth. “Isaiah Bradley,” he said.

“ _Wow_ , alright, if you want to get heavy, that’s fair. I respect it. Bigotry, betrayal, tragedy: one story has it all. I must have read that trade a hundred times,” Stiles said. “I had no idea comics could tell a story like that. Ended up buying it twice, actually; I think Scott borrowed my first one and lost it.”

Derek watched a cloud scoot across the wide blue sky, kind of smiling to himself. “Maybe you left it someplace outside, and it became something important to whoever found it and they hoped you wouldn’t miss it too much,” he said, and his ears were pink now, too. Definitely sunburn.

“That’s a nice idea, I guess. But it was probably Scott.” Stiles took a second to backtrack through the conversation, feeling like he’d forgotten something important. “Oh, hey, I didn’t know you had a sister. Does she live around here too?”

Derek tipped his head toward the back corner of the park, dense with old trees and moss sheltering a huge, weathered mausoleum.

“Ah, shit. Sorry.”

Derek twitched one shoulder in a kind of shrug. “It’s alright,” he said, though Stiles knew it wasn’t; you just got used to it, scarred. “It was a long time ago.”


	2. A Wicked Pack

“Scott! _Scott_! He’s a _Hale_!” Scott had texted Stiles for a ride from work, so it can’t have been a huge surprise to Dr. Deaton that Stiles was bursting into the vet clinic after hours, but he briefly stuck his head out of an exam room down the hall to frown at the disturbance anyway.

Scott made a face up at Stiles from the floor, shoulder-deep in a cat cage and reeking of cleaning products, which was only slightly better than the alternative. “Who?”

“Derek!”

“ _Derek_ Derek? He’s a Hale?”

“That’s what I _said_.”

Scott extracted himself from the cage and frowned at him. “Wait, you didn’t know his last name? It’s been kind of a long time since you met him.”

Stiles waved his arms impatiently. “I just kept forgetting to ask, and then it seemed like I’d missed the window—but it doesn’t matter! Now I know it.”

“Derek Hale,” Scott said dubiously.

Deaton was suddenly in the doorway. “You shouldn’t talk to strange men you meet in graveyards, Mr. Stilinski.”

Stiles whirled around to face him. “Wow, you are very quiet!” Stiles laughed nervously while his heart rate settled back down toward normal. “He’s not a ‘strange man,’ Doc, we’ve been friends forever.”

“You’ve known him a month,” Scott muttered.

“Is it a long time or not, Scott? Make up your mind,” he chided, then turned slowly, deliberately back toward Deaton. “I never told you where I met him.”

Deaton didn’t blink, didn’t so much as flinch. “You must have talked about him before.”

“Not here. Not to you.”

“To Scott.” The veterinarian held up placidly under Stiles’s narrow-eyed suspicion. “I’ll finish up here, Scott,” he directed. “You go on home.”

“Thanks, Doctor Deaton,” Scott said, and went to wash his hands.

Stiles would not be distracted, now that he knew Deaton knew Derek. “You probably see Dee-Dee, don’t you,” he said thoughtfully.

Deaton assumed an expression of polite confusion. “Dee-Dee?”

Stiles held out a hand a little higher than his waist. “Four legs, black fur, your kind of customer. My, what sharp teeth.”

“Ah,” Deaton said, politeness strained, sharpened to wary interest. “So you’re aware of his… genealogy.”

Stiles smirked at him. “Sure,” he said. “It’s obvious, once you know what to look for.”

“Indeed,” Deaton said faintly. “I’m sure I don’t need to impress upon you the need for discretion.”

“Pfft, _natch_ ,” Stiles replied. “Have you met me? My down is so low, it’s practically subterranean.”

Deaton closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips to his temple like he’d been hit with a sudden headache. “Fantastic.”

Stiles grinned with no small amount of triumph and led Scott out to the jeep. Deaton was cooler than he’d thought, if he was okay with Derek’s dog being more than a little bit wolf.

“Alright, dude, keep an eye out,” he told Scott as the Jeep ground into second. “If a gorgeous guy with black hair brings in a huge black dog that looks like it could rip your throat out without even trying, that’s Derek.”

“The dog?”

“Har, har,” Stiles grumbled.

“But have you seen them in the same place in the same time,” Scott joked.

Stiles opened his mouth. Stiles closed his mouth. “Shut up,” he said fervently, and Scott laughed.

“Hey, at least he’s real, right? Remember when you thought his dog was a ghost?”

“Not a ghost, Scott. A protective spirit, ritually sacrificed to guard the dead. Church grims have a long and noble history.”

“A long history of being imaginary.”

“Yeah, okay, I was _ten_. The Google search for ‘black dog Oak Park Cemetery’ went strange places,” Stiles defended. “The rituals are real, though. People used to do really horrible stuff, out of superstition.”

“That’s so wrong, dude. People are assholes,” Scott said. “What do cemeteries need to be protected from, anyway?”

“I don’t know, grave robbers? The kind of people who were into ritual sacrifice, probably, but then I don’t get why they would kill it in the first place.”

“They were evil,” Scott said, like that was the only explanation there could be, and the only one that mattered.

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed, but it still bothered him, years after he’d given himself nightmares from reading too much. “Power, maybe,” he mused, “or a belief that it was worth it, that some alternative was worse.”

“Do you think they’re stuck as ghosts forever? The grims?” Despite his teasing Stiles about their non-existence not two minutes ago, Scott seemed genuinely concerned. Stiles quirked an eyebrow at him. “Dude,” Scott pouted. “Theoretically, or whatever.”

Scott was the kind of guy who needed every story to have a happy ending. Stiles was not. But, as a rule, he liked to make Scott happy. “Yeah, dude, I’m sure,” he relented. “Retirement program, you know. An eternity afterward chasing ghostly squirrels between steaks and belly rubs.” In reality, nothing he’d found made it seem like anyone was particularly worried about what happened to the ghosts once they’d been doomed to haunt the earth forever, which seemed like a real failure of planning, if you asked Stiles, which no one had, though he’d written an essay and turned it in for a sociology assignment. He didn’t see why an animal who was tortured to death would have any reason to protect humans afterward.

Of course, there were other legends about ghostly black dogs: omens of death, of gallows and storms, who sought out lonely travelers and ate their hearts at the crossroads. Stiles had a healthy appreciation for the classics.

 

۩۩

The thing about Derek being a Hale, though, once Stiles had a chance to sit and think about it for more than the five seconds between finding an old picture of the mausoleum Derek had nodded at with the letters unobscured by moss and getting the text from Scott, is that solving one mystery just led to another. The crypt was so old because the Hales had been one of the first families in Beacon Hills, before it was even a town, and the sprawling branches of the family tree wove through a sizeable percentage of the current population by blood or marriage. The fire that took fifteen lives six years ago shook the community to its foundations, and in some ways, it would never recover; certainly it would be a long time before anyone elected mayor stopped feeling like a replacement for Talia Hale. The prolonged spate of arrests afterward, as fraud discovered in the arson report kickstarted a criminal case and murder investigation that led to a series of accomplices, was what propelled Stiles’s dad to the position of sheriff. Laura Hale didn’t officially join the department as a deputy until she finished college, but she was a pale, vicious Fury haunting the station for years after the fire.

So, Derek being a Hale made an awful sort of sense: he was in the park all the time because his whole family was dead and he lived in the woods like a hermit with no wi-fi. But Stiles knew Laura. Stiles had known Laura for _years_ , and she’d never mentioned Derek, not once. When Stiles cracked open the official records, just a little bit—well. He went to her first.

After popping in on and getting waved off by his pops, he found her in the station break room, feet kicked up on the plastic chair beside her, halfway through a monstrously large sandwich. “What is that,” he asked, awed.

Laura licked a smear of dressing off her arm while Stiles made a disgusted face to disguise his jealousy. “Ham, salami, prosciutto, cheddar, mozzarella, provolone, olives, onion, lettuce, mustard, pickles, ranch, and potato chips,” she said smugly. “On sourdough.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said honestly. He wanted to take a picture.

Her grin showed all her teeth. “I know.”

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Do you think—”

“If you even attempt to lay a finger on this sandwich, I’ll rip your hand off and choke you with it,” she said sweetly.

“Laura,” he tried, “Are we not friends?”

“Sandwich-sharing is an exclusive privilege of friend level six or higher.” She took another massive bite, utterly remorseless.

“What level am I?” She considered and held up some fingers. “ _Three_? Are you—what do I have to do to get to six?”

Her fingers went down to one as she chewed and swallowed, then cleared her throat. “Save my life, solve a case, or get me a date,” she said. “A good one.”

“Noted.” He took a moment to rearrange his life priorities, buoyed by at least having a set of solid goals. “Is friendship level three high enough to talk to you while you finish?”

“You may proceed,” she said graciously, and proceeded with her dinner.

“So I, uh. I met—a guy. Recently.”

She sat up a little straighter and shot him a soft smile. “Aww, that’s great, kid. You want me to run a background check?”

“No, I—wait, would you really? That’s a level three perk?”

“Yes,” she decided. “I like running background checks.”

“I would too,” he agreed. “But, um. I think. Maybe. You might know him?” She raised her eyebrows. “Uh. Dark hair, six foot, GQ stubble, heterochromatic eyes,” he may have done some research into eye colors, so sue him. “typically wears a leather jacket. He has, um.” He glanced around to make sure they were alone, and dropped his voice. “A wolf?”

Laura put down her sandwich.

“A wolf,” she said carefully.

Stiles winced. “Wolf… hybrid, I guess. He’s never caused any problems or anything, totally a sweetheart, please don’t feel like you have to do anything about it in either an official or unofficial capacity. But Derek said—” well, no, he hadn’t _said_ , but, “—I think he’s a Hale?”

“The wolf,” she said flatly.

“Derek,” he corrected, and it was less funny this time, as he watched her stony face anxiously. Maybe it had been a bad idea to mention a possibly illegal pet to a deputy, but he’d thought Laura wouldn’t care that much, and it was kind of a distinguishing fact about Derek.

“And you’ve… seen… the wolf,” she said.

“Uh—yes. Yeah. I met him first, actually.”

Her expression flipped from wary to baffled, which let Stiles relax a little with its familiarity. “And you weren’t—the usual reaction is fear. Terror. Murderous horror, if we’re really unlucky.” His shoulders loosened in relief: she was on his side.

“No? I was pretty scared already, that night. It was honestly pretty reassuring when he showed up.”

 “He saved you.”

That seemed accurate, in retrospect. “Well, yeah.”

She squinted at him for a second, then sat back in her chair. “You are seriously the weirdest kid.”

“I get that a lot,” Stiles admitted.

Laura picked her sandwich back up. “So, why do you think we’re related? It’s not like we all know each other.”

When he’d arrived, he’d had the wild hope that Laura’s little brother had been in hiding from the people who murdered her family and/or they’d just had a fight so bad they no longer talked. That hope was growing dimmer by the second. “Well. Um. He said his sister’s interred in the Hale mausoleum, and… and I know you had a brother. Named Derek.”

The sandwich dropped again, forgotten. “It’s a family name,” she said quietly, unreadable. When she met his eyes again, hers were flinty. “I know you’re not trying to be a dick about this, but I dreamed for years that someone else made it out. They would have found me by now. I would _know_.” She pushed back from the table and stood, settled her gun belt, and an aura of command almost visibly wrapped around her. Stiles felt his stomach drop to somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. “Come on, kid,” she said. “You did exactly right bringing this to me. Now, you’re going to show me where you met this asshole, and I’m going to ask him some pointed fucking questions.” Her bared teeth flashed as she led him out past Dispatch to a patrol car, and it was nothing like when she’d grinned at him earlier.

“What color are his eyes?” she asked, once they were on Birch Street, the night black and empty around them; the park closed at sunset, so there were no lights. Her lips had pressed together tight when he directed her to the cemetery. Stiles jittered in his seat the whole way in the silence, torn between the faint hope that there was some misunderstanding and the bleak certainty that he had started to trust a sociopath who had probably been manipulating him all along.

“What?”

“His eyes, Stiles.” He fumbled with the seat belt as she jerked the car into park.

“Uh—green? Greeny-gold, kind of, more green around the outside, with the hetero—”

“The _wolf_ eyes,” she snapped, which made even _less_ sense.

 “Why does that—blue! They’re blue,” he amended at her glare, and she slammed the door and strode out into the black. “Laura! Wait!” As he stumbled out to follow her, his foot caught on something and he tripped, staggered a few steps, almost went sprawling before she grabbed his arm. “He’s probably not even here, I don’t know why he would be.” He didn’t know why Derek had been there that first night, when Stiles was drunk on the bench. Why would a guy like that ever want to sit and talk with him? He’d been so _stupid_.

“If he’s been here, I can find him,” Laura said ominously. Her fingers were a vise grip on the meat of his arm as she dragged him through the darkness, sharp nails digging in.

Stiles stumbled again. “Laura, _wait_ , I can’t—”

A throaty snarl ripped through the night, and a huge black shadow loomed out of the darkness like it had coalesced from inky air, hackles up, sharp teeth bared in challenge, eyes almost glowing with unearthly ice as it faced down Laura.

“ _Dee-Dee_ , hey, hey big guy, long time no see,” Stiles started, and it had never been more obvious that the comforting shadow who let Stiles pet his ears was an apex fucking predator and _who knew_ why it had never hurt him, who could say whether this was the night it changed its mind and tore his throat out—but a traitorous corner of his heart was _so relieved_ to see that his friend was okay, and trusted the wolf wouldn’t hurt him, even now, and felt safer for having him near. Laura’s hand spasmed tighter and it _hurt_ and he tried to shake her off, and the wolf in front of them twitched like it wanted to lunge as Laura pulled Stiles behind her, yanking him off-balance again.

Even once he caught himself, he felt like he was still falling, as Laura stared straight at the wolf, bared her own teeth, and said, “Hey, dickhead, I don’t know what your game is here, but this is Hale territory, _my_ territory, and this kid is under my protection. Get the fuck out, or I’ll rip your guts out _and_ arrest you.” Or maybe Stiles was standing still and the world had gone unstable around him, because Dee-Dee’s growl cut off like—like he _understood_ , and it looked like it, too, the wolf’s eyes flying between Laura and Stiles, like he was trying to _verify_ —

“Change back,” Laura demanded, powerful with command; she took a half step forward as she said it, and Dee-Dee flinched away. The wolf snarled again, snapped, but she’d seen him hesitate and pressed the advantage. Stiles watched numbly as the deputy he’d made potato salad with for summer barbeques, who bitched about TV with him and showed him how to change the spark plugs in the jeep, seemed to grow a few inches and _shift_ into a sharp-eared, sharp-toothed, sharp- _clawed_ – holy shit, she’d torn _holes_ in his flannel by _accident_ as her hand fell away from his arm – the creature that had been Laura Hale bared its teeth and claws and _roared_ , and Stiles dropped his ass to the ground as the sound echoed and echoed around them.

“Holy shit,” Stiles said faintly, and re-evaluated everything he knew.

“Don’t make me fucking full shift,” Laura threatened through her fangs. “If I wreck this bra, I’ll be _angry_.”

The wolf was looking at Stiles, though, not her. It was looking at Stiles. _He_ was looking at Stiles. _Werewolves were real_. “Derek,” Stiles whispered.

Blue eyes darted away, then, and went dark when his lids closed. The transformation was nothing like Laura’s; instead of the shift and crack of bones and sinew, the wolf dematerialized, collapsed into black, swirling fog, and suddenly Derek was standing there, green-gold eyes and leather jacket and face twisted up with—

“Wait, where’d your clothes come from,” Stiles asked, because somehow that was his first question here, and at the same time, Laura said, “What the fuck?”

Derek’s shoulders hunched a little, his hands stuffed into his pockets. “Stiles, I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

“This is a serious violation of bro code,” Stiles said to both of them as his thoughts raced ahead of his mouth.

Laura whipped around to stare at him. “ _Stiles_ , did you _see_ that? Where’d he go?”

Stiles dragged wide eyes from her to Derek, who was still just standing there. “You’re werewolves” he said intelligently.

“Werewolves don’t _vanish_ ,” she snapped. In the face of his complete blankness while his world rebooted, the sharp edge of her anger bled into confusion. “Wait, you—What did _you_ think we were talking about?”

“She can’t see me like this,” Derek told him. “Most people can’t. Two worlds, two forms. One for each. Neither living nor dead, that’s the curse.”

Which meant Derek wasn’t just a werewolf; he was part wolf, part _ghost_. And _that_ meant, most importantly— “I was right,” Stiles breathed. “I fucking _called it_! You’re a _grim_!”

“You didn’t call it, you didn’t know it was me,” Derek said crossly, at the same time Laura said, “Don’t be stupid, people can’t be grims. I protect Beacon Hills because my family always has,” and their annoyed expressions were so similar they could have been siblings.

“I _totally_ called it, and evidently they can, because:” he held out his hand to indicate Exhibit A, standing right in front of them whether Laura could see him or not.

Laura’s eyes went wide and her claws sprang back out. “That omega’s _still_ _here_?”

“I’m not an omega,” Derek snapped, aggrieved, defending himself to someone who _couldn’t hear him_. He looked at Stiles beseechingly. “I didn’t know how to tell you, or if I even should. It’s dangerous knowledge to have,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be—I would understand if you never want to talk to me again.”

“What’s an—okay, no, both of you, _stop_.” Stiles pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes, just for a second, like he could hold in his whirling thoughts. He pointed at Laura. “Evidently that was rude.” He pointed at Derek. “He’s right there.”

Stiles stood up, walked over to Derek, and punched him on the shoulder. Hard. Laura narrowed her eyes at the point of impact. Derek just accepted it without protest, like something he deserved, so it wasn’t even satisfying. “You _asshole_ ,” Stiles accused. “I asked if you were _living under a rock_.”

Derek finally looked up and met Stiles’s eyes. The little smile that crept to the corner of his mouth was one of the most beautiful things Stiles had ever seen. “Well. For some definitions of living,” he said, which was still a weird thing to smile about. Or joke about. Or… be.

“Wait, does that mean you have a headstone here? Can I see it?” He squinted. “Is that morbid? Or like… personal?”

“Both,” Derek said, “But when has that ever stopped you?”

“He’s going to show us his headstone,” Stiles relayed to Laura, bouncing on his toes.

She rubbed her forehead with the back of one hand, claws and fangs put away. “Seriously,” she muttered, “the weirdest kid.” Her arms snapped out suddenly, toward Derek— _through_ Derek, and they both shuddered. “Ugh, that’s cold.” She shook her hand out, grimacing, and Derek crossed his arms over his chest. “Sorry,” she said in his direction.

“No, you’re not,” Stiles and Derek said together, Derek significantly grumpier.

Laura shrugged. “Why can you see him? This is freaky,” she asked Stiles.

“You’re a _werewolf_ , you can’t be scared of ghosts,” Stiles admonished.

“It’s freaky,” she said stubbornly. “I can’t even _smell_ him.”

“Oh my god, I don’t want to think about you smelling people.” That was only kind of a lie, not that he would admit it. Laura had wolf senses! Because werewolves were real! Stiles wasn’t over it.

“People who have been close to someone as they die can usually see and hear me,” Derek said.

“Oh,” Stiles said, and told Laura. That explained Father Morse, and as many people as Laura had lost, she’d been at school the night of the fire. Stiles decided he would never ask Isaac.

Derek touched a gentle finger to his arm, and Stiles felt goosebumps rise at the warm contact. “This is different,” Derek said softly, apprehensive. “This is—I don’t know what this is.”

“Oh,” he said again, and it was suddenly a little hard to breathe. “Is that why,” he forced out.

“No,” Derek interrupted him. “No. It’s just. Rare.”

Stiles didn’t know what to make of that, but the weight eased. He bumped their shoulders together.

Derek led them to the back corner of the cemetery, past the well-worn path to the Hale monument, down gravel turns Stiles had run along on stubby legs with his mom chasing behind him, where they’d knelt together to trace carved letters sunk into stone: _Henrietta Stevens, 1823-1860_ ; _Joseph Ayers, 1889-1950_ ; _Bethiah Tompkins, In Reverent and Loving Memory_ —until his mom was too tired to come with him. Until he had to start meeting her there. In the far back corner, where two stone walls met in a crumbling pile of rock, Derek stopped.

He gestured at a big, flat stone, person-sized, set in the ground seemingly at random. There was no carving, not even worn away. Looking at it made a sick feeling curl up and eat at Stiles’s stomach. “That’s it?” he asked, “Not even a plaque?”

Derek didn’t look at him. “You know what they did,” he said, and Stiles remembered—yeah. Maybe he hadn’t been imagining that Dee-Dee was distracting him when he bumped his head against Stiles’s chest and bit down on the sleeve of his hoodie, when Stiles had started to tell his new friend about the things he’d found online that gave him nightmares.

Stiles shivered. “They were keeping you in.” 

Laura was frowning as she reached out and set her hand on the stone. “You’re still in there,” she said. “You’re still—”

“Not really,” Derek said, but Stiles thought it wasn’t that he _wasn’t_ really, either.

Laura’s jaw set. “We’re going to fix this,” she said. “I didn’t know. None of us knew.”

“Her great-aunt knew,” Derek said to Stiles. “Emma was friends with a banshee who thought they could manage it, together, if they found someone who undo some of the spellwork. Then Lorraine died while they were still working on Edgar’s notes from the twenties, her daughter and grand-daughter were human, and then…” he trailed off, gave a half-hearted shrug. “The records were probably in the pack house library. I didn’t ask.”

Stiles summarized for Laura, and said, “How can you be so calm about this? A hundred years, and you don’t even know for sure, and it’s probably gone? I would be—how can you stand it?” His hands clenched into fists to stop their shaking.

Derek’s green-gold eyes were dark in the moonlight. “I was angry for a long time. It gets tiring,” he said. “This is how it is, now. I get to meet Cora’s great-great-great-grandkids, and help people when I can, and the ones who did this are dead and gone.”

“Sure,” Laura said when Stiles relayed, “You’re trapped under a rock and you’re trapped in this graveyard, but the best revenge is muddling along with your cursed undeath, since you don’t have the option of living well.”

Derek rolled his eyes a little at her sarcasm. “What else is there? Eventually, the spell will fade and I’ll be free. Until then…” he shrugged again. Stiles hated it.

“Oh my god,” Stiles muttered. “You’ll die, you mean. You’ll be _caged_ here until you _die_.”

Laura glare slightly to the left of where Derek actually was. “This is dark magic. This is _wrong_. I’m the alpha, it’s my town, so it’s my responsibility. We’re going to fix it,” Laura swore. “Who was the banshee? I can search the records for more family, maybe find another copy of the research notes.”

Derek looked back and forth between them, then shook his head. “Lorraine Martin,” he said. “If this doesn’t go anywhere, I want to you know that it’s okay. Just, come talk to me sometimes. Bring me some books. That’s better than I—that’s all I ask.”

“Dude,” Stiles said. “You’ll never freaking get rid of me. I’m invested.” He reached out to rest a hand on Derek’s arm, which had gone tense, hunched, and he watched the soft leather move under his fingers as Derek shifted infinitesimally toward him – _ghost leather_ , part of him thought giddily – until he realized— “Wait, did you say Lorraine _Martin_?”

 

۩۩

Lydia Martin ruled Beacon Hills High School with an impeccably manicured fist for two years before a random animal attack at the winter formal put her in a coma, the same rabid mountain lion that ended up killing Allison’s crazy grandfather and a tourist with the improbably cool name Deucalion before other local hunters and the sheriff’s department tracked it down. By itself, the incident on the lacrosse field would have caused less than a blip on Lydia’s meticulously managed Facebook timeline, but when she escaped the hospital and ran around naked in the woods for days in some kind of fugue state, her social cachet took a nose dive. She was still feared enough to avoid mockery, but instead of holding court during her lunch period at a table full of adoring sycophants, she generally sat with her best friend Allison, which meant tolerating Scott, which meant sometimes making eye contact with Stiles, which still sometimes amazed him. Now, though, it wasn’t enough. He needed an actual conversation, with words exchanged by both parties. He painstakingly planned his approach, identifying the independent study period she spent in the library for advanced calculus as the best time and place: she’d be alone, with nobody close enough to eavesdrop, yet approachable, and unlikely to run.

Maybe Scott had a point about his previous observational… habits… being a little too close to stalking. That was awkward. It was a little startling for him to realize that he actually hadn’t been thinking about her that much, recently, that at some point he’d lost his awareness of whether she might be looking in his direction.

Weird.

He hadn’t decided exactly how to start the conversation by the time he slid into the wooden seat across the table from her in the library, but talking was typically something he didn’t worry about in advance. As it happened, he didn’t even get a chance to start; Lydia glanced up as he sat, and as soon as he opened his mouth, she said, “No.”

His arms jerked in frustration. “You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

“Oh, well, in that case,” she tapped a finger against her chin, “ _No_.”

“Please? Just five minutes. It’s really important.”

“Jackson and I are still going to prom together. The break-up was mutual, we are still friends, and I’m not interested in going with you.”

“Obviously.” He’d been obsessed, not _delusional_.

“Or dating you at all.”

Okay, that stung, but it wasn’t exactly surprising. “Harsh. But—”

“Not even a double date with Scott and Allison.”

“I wasn’t going ask you on a date!” he snapped, then paused. “Not with me. There’s a deputy I could introduce you to.” He might even get a sandwich out of it.

She sniffed disdainfully. “A deputy? Please, no. I don’t need that kind of testosterone in my life.”

"I can honestly promise that testosterone won’t be a problem,” he assured her.

Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “I’m working with Danny for the English project.”

“I’m aware.”

She put down her pencil. He barely, _barely_ managed to hold in the victory fist pump. You couldn’t be as smart as Lydia without some natural curiosity. “Let me see your phone,” she said suspiciously. 

Hoping she wasn’t about to shatter it with the foot of her chair in exchange for even having this conversation, he dug it out of his pocket and handed it over. When she just checked the lock screen, he realized what she was looking for. “I’m not recording. It’s really, really not a prank.”

“Whatever,” she said, but kept his phone on her side of the table like a hostage. “Five minutes.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay.”

“Stiles.”

“Okay!” he said, too loudly, and his face spasmed in response to the librarian’s sharp look in a way he hoped looked apologetic. He glanced around to make sure nobody was close enough to listen in, and leaned toward her, dropped his voice low. “I don’t know if you remember this, but I was there, when you came out of the woods. When my dad found you.”

Her lips pursed. “Are you blackmailing me?”

“No! Not at all.” Not unless he had to. “I’m just… saying. I heard you.” He licked his lips. There really wasn’t a subtle way to say it, and he probably wasn’t the person to try, so he just went for it. “I heard you say you see dead people.”

Her eyes darted to the nearby tables, which were empty, because Stiles didn’t want those particular rumors out any more than she would. “I don’t know where you think you’re going with this, but it’s a _matter of record_ that I was under a lot of mental and physical stress after being _assaulted and put in a coma_ ,” she hissed.

Holding up his hands defensively would not protect him in any way, but it still made him feel better. “Yes, yep, right, I know that. Not the point.” Except… the record was that she’d been attacked by a wild animal. Assault was a crime perpetrated by humans. Lydia would know the difference. He filed that away for later. “I was wondering if you really meant ‘people.’ As in, more than one. Person.”

A muscle clenched in her jaw. “Because seeing _one_ dead person would be normal,” she deflected.

Moment of truth. Cards on the table. “Well, sure, if it’s the same person as the rest of us.”

Her exhale wasn’t loud in the quiet room, but from anyone with less steely self-control, it would have been. “If you’re fucking with me, Stiles, I swear to God I will end you. Who do you see?”

“There’s this guy always in the park near my house. The one off Birch Street? Except he’s dead, or mostly dead; he’s been dead for a long time.”

“Birch Street—the Oak Park _graveyard_? Lots of dead people are _always_ in graveyards, Stiles! That’s the _point_ of graveyards! A hypothetical person with a theoretical propensity for seeing dead people might purposefully avoid them _for that reason_.”

“Only like half of it’s actually burial space,” he grumbled, because he had to keep telling Scott the same thing.

“ _Any_ dead bodies are too many! _One_ grave is more than normal for a municipal park!”

He held up a finger. “Actually—”

“ _Do not_ talk to me right now about the average volume of partially decayed human remains per settled square kilometer right now!”

“Does that mean we can talk about it la—” the look she gave him made it clear that _he_ would be partially decayed human remains if he persisted, so his mouth snapped closed. For a second. “Okay, but I just—does this ring any bells? He’s tall, dark hair, stubble, kind of got bunny teeth, very expressive eyebrows, dorky laugh, and you’d never guess he reads comics but he does – or, I don’t know, you might guess, but I didn’t—actually, now that I think about it, he probably stole one of my comics like five years ago. Um. He always materializes a jacket even though he doesn’t need it because he’s been standing around talking to people for like two hundred years and he _still_ never knows what to do with his hands.” Lydia’s look was unreadable, and Stiles belatedly realized he may have gotten derailed. “Uh. Anyway. Have you seen him? His name’s Derek Hale.”

“Wow.” Lydia sat back in her seat and stared at him for a long second, then picked up her pencil. “Alright, Stiles. You have my attention. Since the library is hardly the place for any further conversation, you can meet me at my house after school.”

“Wait, really? Seriously? That’s honestly more than I—”

“Your five minutes are up.”

She was actually looking at him, though, in the way he’d always dreamed about, and he grinned at her, because even if it wasn’t the kind of victory he’d always expected to feel, it was still a step toward getting the smartest girl in five counties on their side. “Great! That’s— _so_ great. You won’t regret this! I’ll text you!”

“Don’t text me.”

He shot back with double-barreled finger guns and ran into a wall walking backwards toward the door. “I’ll see you later!” he called, and everyone else in the library turned to look, and Lydia shook her head as she went back to her work.


	3. The Sudden Frost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized as I posted this part that I left out a pretty big section at the beginning of chapter 2, so that's fixed, sorry >_<
> 
> Warning for blood and allusions to death, homophobia, torture. Episcopalian Hales borrowed from [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong)!

The white knuckles of her little hands wrapped around a mug of tea was the only indication that belied Lydia’s outward calm. “A banshee,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s as plausible as anything else, I suppose.”

“So you believe me?” Stiles asked hopefully, “You’ll look for her notes?”

“Oh, I’ve already found them.”

Stiles blinked at her. “You—what?”

She took a slow sip. Stiles wanted to scream with impatience, and by the look she levelled at him over the rim of her mug, she could tell. It must have been comforting in its familiarity, because her grip on the mug was less desperate. “A few years ago, I found a very strange file of papers in my grandmother’s office in the lake house. I started translating freshman year; it’s why I switched from French to Latin. Of course, then it turned out there were pages in _Archaic_ Latin, but it helped me start.” Her face clouded. “And then once I understood what I was reading, I thought she must have been mad.” She took another sip. Savored it. Said, “Until I was bitten by a werewolf.” 

For some reason, Stiles’s instinctual response was to blurt, “Laura’s a good werewolf! It wasn’t her!”

“Aha! I _knew_ it! I _knew_ they were real,” Lydia shouted, tea sloshing over the table.

Stiles winced and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Crap. Can we pretend I didn’t tell you? Laura was supposed to be here for that part. Um. Do you still want her number?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she said smugly. “You may give her mine.”

 

۩

“Captain America: Man Out of Time,” Derek read off the title of the trade Stiles had handed to him and rolled his eyes. “Subtle.” He was smiling, though. Stiles grinned.

“I’ve got a bunch of movies on my laptop, too,” he said. “Check this out.” Derek leaned forward in interest; the screen flickered when he got too close.

Derek walked him to the boundary when it was time for him to get home for dinner. Now that Stiles knew to look for it, there was a dip in the ground, a line with no shoots or trees, right on the edge, like a well-beaten trail under the dead leaves.

 

۩

“Dude,” Scott said, eyes wide.

“I _know_ ,” Stiles agreed.

“Do you know what this means?” Scott said, “I totally called it! Your boyfriend’s a werewolf!”

Stiles opened his mouth. Stiles closed his mouth. “He’s not my boyfriend,” he objected.

“Dude,” Scott said, and he sighed.

Sometimes since the summer started he felt sure that Derek was looking at him like that, that he wanted more too, and it made him warm to his toes—but that was it. “It’s not like we can actually go anywhere but the park, and I don’t even know if he _can_ meet my dad.”

“Yeah, that part sucks.” Scott leaned against his shoulder on the couch. “You’ll figure it out, man. If I can win back Allison, anything’s possible.”

Stiles was tempted to point out that there was a difference in both the type and magnitude of his obstacles: Allison sometimes looked at maps like she wanted to throw a dart and go, to find out if the air somewhere else was any easier to breathe, but at least she and Scott were both definitely _alive_. Neither of them were under some conditions incorporeal, magically tethered to their burial site, _or_ unphysically incompatible with modern technology, and sometimes it felt unfair. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, dude,” he said instead, and meant it. He passed Scott a controller. “CoD?”

 

۩

Sure, we’ve got christening records,” Father Morse said. “The Hales helped build this town, you know, and that includes the church.”

“I didn’t know werewolves could be Episcopalian,” Stiles said. “I expected more, like, moon stuff, solstices; pagan rituals or whatever.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “They’re not exclusive. We can dance naked in the moonlight and volunteer for pancake breakfast in the morning.”

“Good to hear, Laura, I’ll put your name down for next Sunday,” Father Morse said with a smile. She winced, caught, but didn’t protest. “There’s no species barrier to getting right with God,” he told Stiles, looking down at him over his glasses.

“I’m an agnostic Jew,” Stiles said.

“Even so,” Father Morse said peaceably.

He stopped Laura with a hand on her shoulder on their way out, a few hours later. You should know,” he said, “Before you do this, you should know. I offered him last rights. Years ago, now.” He cut off Laura’s protest with a look. “I _offered_. Neither of us knew if it would help at all, but there’s no shame in a soul wanting to be put to rest. It took him a few months to give me an answer, but he did. He declined. He said there’s bad days, and bad decades, but if he let go, if he gave up on getting by, he’d never know if he missed something good.” His hand was a weight on her shoulder, and his eyes were intent. “You remember that. That boy deserves to live, but he isn’t ready to die. Whatever it is you’re doing, you make sure you do right.”

Laura stood straight and met the charge steadily. “I will,” she said.

She had to. Not just because she was the alpha, though she was. Laura knew something about rifling through the days before you and measuring them against the days behind. She understood facing the day out of stubbornness when it felt like there was nothing else left.

Hales were hard to kill. Evidently, they always had been.

 

۩

Laura, Lydia, and Stiles huddled around Laura’s kitchen table, carefully keeping the dripping bits of their overloaded sandwiches out of Lydia’s work. “This, here, though,” Lydia said, pointing, “We have a banshee and an alpha in his blood line, so that part’s manageable, but this word means ‘catalyst,’ and there’s no explanation of it anywhere. We can’t do anything without breaking the curse, and this catalyst is the key to the whole thing. We’re stuck.”

Stiles sat back and rubbed his tired eyes, let them wander around Laura’s semi-modern loft: the covered easel in the corner; the bright, open kitchen; the neat row of postcards on the wall, beautiful snapshots from all over the world, blank or with short notes signed, enigmatically, ‘- P.’ Rain beat steadily against the windows like it was determined to trap him inside for hours, at least the rest of the day.

Laura patted him on the arm without looking away from Lydia. “What about those notes Edgar left in the margins, did you make anything out of that?”

“One of the words is ‘silver,’ but I can’t tell if the rest is—actually, I was thinking it might be a different kind of shorthand.”

“Hmm,” Laura said, “I hope that doesn’t mean Argents.”

 

۩

“You killed my grandad,” Allison screamed, her bow drawn, arms shaking, a wickedly sharp arrow pointed at Laura’s head. The rain hammered down around them, plastered her hair to her head, weight down dark clothes long since soaked through.

Larua’s teeth were white and sharp. “No,” she snarled, “He killed my whole family _and his own son_ because your uncle and mine were in love. I _wanted_ a trial. I wanted everyone to _know_. _That’s_ who you’re defending,” she spat.

“Allison, put the bow down,” Scott begged. “This isn’t you.”

“She’s a werewolf, Scott! My whole family are werewolf hunters! They must have—there has to be a _reason_ for it!”

“This isn’t hunting, Allison, it’s _murder_!”

She wavered for a long, suspended second, then crumpled to the ground like a wet paper doll. Scott ran over and threw his arms around her as she held her face and sobbed.

 

۩

“A catalyst, yes, but it’s not a thing,” Dr. Deaton said. “It’s an ability, or, more commonly, a person who has a certain set of abilities. They’re quite unusual.” His eyes rose to Stiles. “The modern term is a Spark.”

“Okay, so, how do we find—” Stiles faltered. “What’s that look for?”

“I don’t believe in luck or fate, Mr. Stilinski, but I do believe in balance. It may be that you have a significant role in returning balance to this town.”

Stiles squinted at him. “What’s that supposed to mean? Can I find a spark? Because it kind of makes me sound like a Jedi, which is obviously a lifelong dream. You know, balance the force? Is it like that, even a little bit? Actually, could you just lie and tell me yes?”

Deaton sighed.

 

۩

Stiles slapped down a sheaf of papers neatly but thoroughly marked in beautiful red penmanship and scowled at Isaac. “Just because Derek has a sexy beautiful brain and copious free time doesn’t mean you can use him to fix all your papers.”

“I traded him the collected works of e. e. cummings for his trouble,” Isaac said. “Are you telling me it’s just coincidence you did that history project on queer communities during the gold rush and their erasure in the historic narrative?”

“I admit nothing,” Stiles said, and slunk away with the tattered cerements of his dignity.

 

۩

Laura hated visiting the animal clinic, half for the smells, half for the itch of mountain ash and magic that the thing was practically built of, and it was never worth it just to see Deaton, who was disconcertingly unreadable and generally disinclined to help. But it was where Stiles spent his Wednesday and Saturday nights, now, so she dropped in once in a while, especially if Lydia was there too.

“Your coffee, Princess,” she said, handing over an elaborate concoction piled high with whipped cream.

“Don’t call me that,” Lydia snipped, but Laura caught her hiding a smile under the pretext of verifying she’d gotten the order right.

“I want coffee,” Stiles whined.

“We all want things,” Deaton snapped – snapped! – “For instance, I want you to _focus_.”

Laura settled into the stool next to Lydia and leaned in close. “It’s going well, I take it?”

Lydia turned her head just a hair and looked up at Laura through her eyelashes. “It’s better now,” she whispered back.

 

۩

Harley cornered Stiles at his locker before the first bell, and clearly his Adderall hadn’t kicked in yet, because when she asked, “What the hell happened to Erica Reyes?” he glumly answered, “Laura Hale.”

The shot of adrenaline made him slam his locker much harder than he meant to. “Took her shopping! Laura took her shopping. With Lydia. Martin,” he covered, and it had the benefit of being true. They watched Erica stalk down the hallway in three-inch heels toward the normally inscrutable Boyd, who was gripping the lockers behind him like otherwise he’d fall over or wake up.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “You got weird this year, Stiles. Weirder.”

“Life got weird,” he said philosophically. “Hey, I wrote an article on the fundraiser for the Beacon Hills Historical Society, if you need inches for the student paper this week.” It had been a huge pain to find official sources for that gold rush paper; Mrs. Nakamura had done him a solid.

“Always,” she said, letting him drop it. “Do you want to write something for the Halloween issue? Local ghost stories, urban legends, something like that?”

Stiles grimaced. “Hard pass,” he said. “Although—werewolves, maybe. They’re seriously misunderstood.”

Harley laughed. “Oh, I like that, that’s a good hook. Send it in by Friday.”

 

۩

Allison knocked on his door, and when he opened it, she thrust a small, musty journal in his direction. It trembled slightly as she held it out. “I found this in—my dad and I were going through Gerard’s things,” she said. “It’s written by an ancestor of mine. Katherine Argent.” Stiles made no move to take it. There was a dark energy around it, something low and hissing, roiling just under the surface, poisonous and venomous and wrong. “Please,” Allison said, her eyes brimming with tears, “Please take it. I think it will help you and Lydia and—and Derek.”

He took it. He read it. It did help, or he thought it would—now he knew exactly what he was trying to undo, at the cost of knowing exactly what had been done. He spent most of that night in the park, afterward, once he finished throwing up. It was kind of like backyard camping; he had a nest of blankets to keep warm, a bag of perfect apples, and an expanded battery pack for his laptop. Derek liked TV and movies that showed him the world outside the park, things he’d never seen, like modern cities and distant countries; Stiles had been looking forward to showing him Planet Earth, and he ended up watching Derek’s face half the time, grounded by the solid weight against his side, warmed by the way he smiled.

There was nothing left to do after that, until Halloween.

 

۩

The sun was just setting and the moon barely rising as Laura and her rag-tag pack of high schoolers and their allies collected in the cemetery parking lot, buzzing with nerves, anticipation, the pull of the moon, and something more. Solstices had power, but you needed the right kind of power for a working like this, and a cross-quarter day with a full moon had been worth waiting for. Plus: tradition. They weren’t exactly raising the dead, but All Hallow’s Eve was the day for it, anyway. Stiles could feel it in his bones, under his skin, a live current and a pressure. Derek met them across a stubborn crack through the pavement that marked his boundary on this side of the park. They peeled off from the group in ones and twos to guard the gates from revelers, hunters, or anything worse. Laura’s bitten wolves hung back to keep watch until they were needed, and it was just Laura, Lydia, and Stiles sanding with Derek over his unmarked, unremarkable rock.

Normally unremarkable. Probably still, to normal senses. On this night, with the practice he’d had, Stiles could see creeping tendrils of decay seeping up from the ground, curling around the rock, clinging to it and crawling across the grass, coating everything in a sucking white film.

Stiles swallowed. “Oh, god.” He tore his gaze away to find Derek watching him. “Okay, big guy. Once we break the first spell, we’re on the clock. Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” Derek said quietly. “It’s time.”

“Okay.” Stiles clenched his hands into fists to stop their shaking. “Okay.” The tendrils seemed to thicken, pulsing. “Are we sure that—I don’t—I don’t know if I can do this,” he admitted. He couldn’t even look at Derek.

“You can,” Laura said, “ _We_ know you can.”

“Stop stalling,” Lydia demanded, but there was tension in her voice too.

“Stiles,” Derek said. His same worn boots were lined up with Stiles’s Converse. “Stiles, look at me.”

Ashamed, nauseated, on the verge of panicking, Stiles could barely raise his head.

“Hey,” Derek said. He reached out with one hand, brushed the backs of his fingers across Stiles’s cheek. His eyes were locked on Stiles’s in question, and Stiles could barely breathe. Instead, he closed the scant inches between them, pressed their lips together, and for an instant Derek was all he could think about, all he could feel, soft skin and the scrape of stubble and the slight vibration in his throat as he hummed, his calm, quiet strength under Stiles’s hands.

Derek pulled away, rested their foreheads together. Stiles opened his eyes. “Yeah?” he asked, voice gone hoarse.

“Yeah,” Derek confirmed. He stepped back and spun Stiles gently by the shoulders until he was facing the unassuming stone. The warm weight of Derek's palm lingered for a moment, then was gone.

“Okay,” Stiles said, “Okay.” He took a deep breath, stretched out his arms to the side, spread his hands, his fingers, planted his feet. When he tipped his head back, the power rose in his blood, the moon and the earth and the feeling of what should be, all arrayed against the clawing wrongness before him.

Lydia drew in a sharp breath as he knelt next to the rock. He felt the slick, rank whisper of malevolent magic over his skin, but it had no hold on him. The stone was cold and rough under his fingers. Solid. Immovable.

It was in his way.

His other hand slammed down. Ethereal golden fire poured down his arm, over his hands, washed over and into the stone, burned away the thrashing tendrils. Granite shuddered and jumped, jarring loose from the soil just a fraction, a fine layer of dust sloughing off like sand. “Done,” he said, and the word seemed to echo through the ground, through the park, strange deep shockwaves of residual power.

“We’re up,” Laura yelled, and Erica, Isaac, and Boyd raced in, already in the half shift, claws and teeth bared.

Lydia yanked Stiles back by his shirt as Laura stepped forward, wolfed out, and dug her claws into the rock. Her betas skidded into place on the other side of it as Laura’s eyes burned red, and between the four of them, they pulled the massive stone loose from the ground, rolled it to the side in a shower of dirt and a stench like a slaughterhouse. The underside was marked with jagged, chiseled lines that made Stiles hurt to look at them, so he didn’t.

In the unnatural hollow revealed, a tangled net of deadly white roots and delicate purple flowers was twisted around the still body of a huge black wolf. Stiles didn’t have to look around to know that Derek wasn’t standing behind him, wouldn’t lope out of the shadows; he would never do anything again, if they didn’t get this right. The wolf’s pelt was matted with rotting, poisoned blood, soaking sluggishly from still-open wounds into the earth and ashes around him. Tight, fine weaves of magic strangled and trapped him there, pulsating with jealous hate around the buzzing golden aura that Stiles had channeled still settling into Derek’s skin. Stiles wasn’t sure if he was imagining the miniscule rise and fall of his breath.

“We can work with this,” Lydia said dispassionately. “Stiles, I’ll need your help for the next one, but in the meantime get started on the mountain ash. Laura—” but she was already there, slicing a claw down her arm, letting the blood pool in her hands instead of healing.

When Lydia screamed, it was piercing and bloodcurdling and not all that out of place on Halloween night, except for the volume, which carried clear across town.

 

Hours later, Derek’s eyes fluttered open. He immediately coughed and gagged, turned on his side, threw up black bile and flowers.

A plastic bottle of water nudged his arm. He looked up.

Stiles grinned down at him, exhausted and filthy; Laura was worse, but she was grinning too, standing with her arms wrapped securely around Lydia from behind, chin on the top of her head—but looking at him, _right_ at him, for the first time. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Stiles said.

Derek painfully dragged himself into sitting positing and took the water, so weak he could barely hold up the bottle. He swished his mouth out, spat, and drank half of it before he tried to speak. “Thanks,” he said, and his voice scraped on his throat, like—he’d been screaming, he guessed, and it never had a chance to heal. “Knew you could do it,” he rasped. “Don’t know what you were worried about.”

Stiles’s grin was blinding, even as he surreptitiously wiped back tears. “Not you, that’s for sure,” he lied, and God, Derek wanted to kiss him again, more than anything.

He knew all the faces looking down at him, at least in passing or from pictures on Stiles’s phone, but Laura wasn’t the only one seeing him for the first time. “Hi,” he said awkwardly.

Laura’s hand was caked with dirt and blood when she reached out for him, but he took it gladly, let her help him out of the ground.

“Come on, grandpa,” she said, “Let’s get out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They weren’t even the weirdest group the diner had seen that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Brief mentions of assault, death, child endangerment, and being buried alive.
> 
> fic and chapter titles from The Wasteland, heavy-handed allusions throughout. All comments welcome! I’m also on [ tumblr ](https://anefan.tumblr.com/) :)


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